Opponents of a proposed natural-gas pipeline that would run through parts of eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, and end in Dracut, are attempting to stop the project by obstructing deals signed by regional utility companies to buy gas from the pipeline.

Kinder Morgan, the company behind the project, has said for more than a year that it has secured preliminary contracts with companies like National Grid and Liberty Utilities to purchase about 40 percent of the 1.2 billion cubic feet per day of gas that the pipeline, in its smallest form, could supply to the region.

Those deals require approval by state public utilities commissions, however, and opposition groups hope that by intervening in the commissions' proceedings they can block or at least substantially delay approval of the deals. If successful, they say, it could allow competing pipeline projects to overtake Kinder Morgan's and make that pipeline commercially unviable.

"I am confident that some of the competing projects will come online quicker and that will be the demise of this proposal," said Vincent DeVito, an attorney representing Northeast Energy Solutions, a consortium of environmental groups fighting the pipeline.

Kinder Morgan's largest competitor, in terms of capacity, is a billion-cubic-feet-per-day pipeline expansion proposed by Spectra Energy. Groups fighting Kinder Morgan's project argue that Spectra's alternative is preferable, because it follows an existing pipeline path and will be less damaging to fragile environments.

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Spectra's plan also does not cross the Merrimack Valley, coming north from Lambertville, N.J., east through New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island, then through South Shore communities into Boston.

In the race between Kinder Morgan, Spectra and others to secure deals, one of the most sought-after customers is the state of Maine.

In 2013, the state's Legislature passed a law granting the Maine Public Utility Commission authority to purchase pipeline capacity with taxpayer dollars in order to encourage the construction of more pipelines to New England and thereby reduce energy costs.

But the commission's examination of which pipeline to purchase capacity on, if any, is moving slowly, and Kinder Morgan is eager to secure commitments before it takes the all-important step of filing an application to build its pipeline with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

"To justify the effort to prepare such a filing, an applicant prefers to have the commercial commitments in place before it begins preparation of the application," Kinder Morgan wrote in a February request asking the Maine commission to make its decision by June 15.

"To the extent the Commission fails to complete its review by June 15, 2015, at a minimum, and there are not sufficient contractual commitments to move to the Certificate application filing stage in September 2015," it could delay by at least a year any energy-cost relief brought by the pipeline's construction, the Kinder Morgan filing went on to say.

Earlier this month, DeVito and Northeast Energy Solutions succeeded in convincing the commission not to hurry its review.

In an interview with The Sun, Kimberly Watson, east-region natural-gas pipeline president for Kinder Morgan, said the company still plans to file its application with FERC in September, whether or not it has secured sufficient commercial commitments.

"If we don't have the project fully subscribed by the time we make our FERC filing, we'll continue to market it," Watson said, adding that it is not unusual for the company to be in that position when building a pipeline.

She said Kinder Morgan's board of directors would ultimately decide whether to move forward with the project when the time comes, based on the commitments secured. She declined to estimate what percent of the pipeline's capacity will need to be spoken for if the project is to be commercially viable.

"Usually, a pipeline has to have 100 or somewhere near 100 percent to feel good about the commercial commitments necessary for a project of this size," said Richard Levitan, a Boston-based energy industry analyst.

Levitan and several other analysts agreed that there is no doubt New England is in an energy drought and that new pipeline infrastructure is necessary to bring down regional energy prices, which are the highest in the country.

The question for local opponents is whether Kinder Morgan can corner a sufficient portion of the market before its competitors.

"With further delay, it would delay that cycle of permits, regulatory (approval), and construction," said Jon Sorenson, president and CEO of Competitive Energy Services, an energy industry consultancy that supports the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

In a 2014 study, CES estimated that the flow of an additional two billion cubic feet of natural gas per day into the region could save energy consumers $600 million each year in reduced rates.

Kinder Morgan has said its pipeline could be scaled up to transmit as much as 2.2 billion cubic feet per day, if there are companies willing to buy it.

So far, Liberty Utilities, which is partially owned by Kinder Morgan, is the only public company to seek approval of its deal to buy gas from the pipeline. Other companies said they plan to begin the process in coming months.

But the Liberty Utilities deal must first overcome a challenge before the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission by the Massachusetts Pipeline Awareness Network (MassPLAN), an umbrella organization that includes Dracut Pipeline Awareness,

MassPLAN will offer expert testimony contradicting Liberty Utilities' claim that the deal with Kinder Morgan is best for its customers, said Richard Kanoff, the group's attorney.

"The Kinder Morgan pipeline is the worst option available because of the environmental impacts, and the fact is it's not needed," he said.

The chances such a challenge will succeed in killing the deal entirely are slim, said Ashley Brown, director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group.

"I think it's highly improbable, based on utility regulators and what they do," he said. "You'd have to produce a really compelling issue, and I haven't heard one."

But in the end, pipeline opposition groups don't necessarily need to win their arguments if they can delay the process long enough for the Spectra pipeline or other projects to advance past Kinder Morgan's.

"I am very confident that if you build it, they will come," Sorenson said. But, he added, "The question remains: Do we need both those big pipelines?"

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